Comments on: “Entire Message” searches blank?

By: Tom Moore

Tom Moore — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 01:33:07 +0000

I actually never had this problem until I tried to use Spotless to prevent indexing of my firewire backup drive. Now I have the problem and reindexing does not help. There is something involving Mail.app itself.

Anyone have this experience?

By: Mitchell

Mitchell — Sat, 20 May 2006 04:33:49 +0000

I’ve got the same exact problem. I reindexed Spotlight, moved the Envelope Index to the desktop and restarted Mail, no luck. The Subject search works fine (in Mail and Spotlight), but the Entire Message option comes up blank. It’s tragic.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 09 May 2006 22:35:00 +0000

I can see how that would fix faulty searches for senders, recipients and subjects, but I am surprised about it fixing the full text search. I’ll have to rethink what I thought I knew. :)

By: Tauquil

Tauquil — Tue, 09 May 2006 16:11:24 +0000

When I transferred my data from my PB to my MBP (using Migration Assistant) my Mail searches were turning up blank results. Moving the Envelope Index to the desktop and restarting Mail seemed to fix the problem.

Could have been a fluke!

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 09 May 2006 14:13:51 +0000

Hi Tauquil. I’m surprised to hear this, as the Envelope Index is actually the SQLite database that indexes data from the To, From and Subject fields, and is not related to, or used by, Spotlight at all.

Are you sure about that?

By: Tauquil

Tauquil — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:59:33 +0000

Deleting the “Envelope Index” in ~/Library/Mail will normally do the trick as well.

Just be sure to make a backup first!